


How They Lost (The MadGirl's Love Song Remix)

by LectorEl



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Taylor has issues, Tobias has issues, everybody has issues, people die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2018-01-12 22:24:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1202752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LectorEl/pseuds/LectorEl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They reap a Fangor every generation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How They Lost (The MadGirl's Love Song Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [How They Lost](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1156589) by [Poetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry). 



**I.**

They reap a Fangor every generation. It's been twenty years since the last time.

And I'm the only one the right age.

I wasn't shocked. I'd been waiting for this since I was eight and did the math. The only thing that shocked me was that they hadn't taken me the year I turned twelve.

As I walked up to the stage, I caught a glimpse of my aunt and uncle in the crowd. I don’t know what I expected to see, but it wasn’t this: nothing but blankness behind their eyes. _They_ were resigned. To them, I was dead already.

They reap a Fangor every generation. Sometimes they even let us win.

**II.**

I'm a weaver by trade. I make cloth with patterns and designs that are too intricate to be made by machine. Or because someone in the Capitol wants handmade cloth just to brag about. It's one of the better paying jobs in district eight, because weavers skills are more specialized, harder to acquire. Most of my commissions involve color or pattern work, the more complex, the better.

The year before last, a Victor, Rachel Berenson, wore a dress made out of my work, a yellow weave with near-invisible threads of orange and silver. It was one of my few non-commissioned works, and still one of the best I've ever made.

I have made beautiful things. And the capitol, for all their power, cannot change that.

**III.**

My aunt and uncle don't come to see me off.

**IV.**

The fabric on the train's furnishings is machine-made. Out of the chaos of details and noise, this is the first thing to make it through.

It's machine-made. I've made fabric more beautiful, better made. I'm _wearing_ fabric better made. That's enough to let me breathe again, and let the train resolve into something other than light and noise and movement.

My fellow tribute fidgets and shifts, staring at the capitol representative from the corner of her eye. I don't know her name. She's skinny, skin tight over bones with little between, and she stares at the food – the rich, impossible food – with longing and regret.

“Here.” My voice creaks. I don't speak much.

She takes the wrapped package in confusion, opening it carefully. There's some bread, a few raw vegetables, a bit of dried jerky. Not a lot, but enough for a day's meal. Same thing I carry on me everyday, just in case.

“It's hard to eat rich stuff if you've gone hungry for a while,” I said. Before I started weaving, I'd gone hungry too. You never forget it.

She nods. “Thank you.”

**V.**

I let the voices wash over me, breaking like waves upon a pier. Stylists, sponsors, morphing power, it was too much and too fast for me to understand. The one thing I did get was that we couldn't look weak, if there was to be any hope of us surviving. So I breathed, and stared into the distance, and didn't listen, didn't think, didn't feel.

They put us on a chariot, dressed in horrible, gaudy costumes. The waste of the fabric – of cloth that both of us could tell was from the better part of the manufacturing center – sent sparks of anger to burn at my shield of indifference. This was what the labor of our district was used for?

The other tribute takes my hand and squeezes. We share a look of mutual contempt.

“They're really clueless, aren't they?” she whispers to me.

“Completely.”

**VI.**

One of the other tributes – not the girl from my district – nearly kills someone before the games began. And some part of me is still laughing that anyone _cares_. Once we're in the arena, the capitol wants us to murder each other as dramatically as possible. How can they possibly complain one of us is starting early?

“You like my little show?” the would-be killer asks, tossing her long, blonde hair. Her lips are stained with blood, and the bruises are already starting to rise. The peacekeepers didn't manage to get all her knives, either.

I offer her a thin smile. “The peacekeapers reactions were amusing.”

“Weren't they?” She smiles, revealing perfectly white teeth. “I'm glad to see _somebody_ around here has a sense of humor. I'm Taylor. You?”

“Tobias.” I take her offered hand, startling at the feel of cold metal. Her grin widens, looking predatory.

“Got these the day I arrived,” she says, tapping her metal fingers against her metal leg. “Can't have an ugly little amputee wandering around the area, can they? They fixed my face, too. Our lords and masters are _so_ generous.”

I stifle a snort. “I don't know what we'd do without them.”

“Not die young, which would be terrible and dull,” Taylor agrees, stretching out to lounge on the floor like a contented wolf after a kill.

“An absolute tragedy. To grow old, god, what a nightmare.”

“I like you,” Taylor declares, and takes my hand. “Let's kill each other in the arena, at the end. It'll be so much more fun than the other options.”

“I'll try not to die till you get to me,” I promise, frightened yet blackly amused. If I don't win, and the other tribute from my district doesn't either, I think I want it to be Taylor. The capitol absolutely deserves to have her happen to them.

**VII.**

Taylor scores a nine on her ranking. I managed a seven.

The girl from my district receives a three. The mentors talk about whether they should give up on the lost cause to concentrate on winning sponsors for the one who actually has a chance.

They're not as discrete as they think they are. I hear them. So does she. That night, we share a bed, tangled up in each other like kittens, seeking shelter in each other.

There's so little time left before we die.

**VIII.**

The arena is a forest, surrounded by cliffs.

**IX.**

The cornucopia is a bloodbath. Bodies, blood, death, and I am in it, trying to grab something that will save our lives. The girl from my district follows at my heels, watching my back as best she can.

“I'll be waiting, Tobias!” Across the cornucopia, Taylor grins at me, teeth bloody, before vanishing into the woods with her winnings. And there's no time to think. Only to react.

We run, clutching whatever we've scooped up, heading into the thicket of the trees. No one's following us, as far as I can tell. Which doesn't mean much.

“Morphs,” the girl reminds me. I nod.

“Grab the first living thing you find, doesn't have to be good.” I'm already turning away, eye lifted upwards to see whats living in the canopy.

My fault.

I shouldn't have turned away.

She died. Just a gasp, a hiccup of air, and then the soft sound of something hitting the ground. I'm running almost before I realize.

**X.**

A third of the tributes are dead by the first nightfall, announced by the cannons. Taylor isn't one of them. A fact I knew already, because she's twenty feet ahead of me, playing with some poor animals. I don't dare breath from my spot deep in the bushes, my mouse heart racing fast enough to burst.

There are others – an entire pack of careers who she'd joined up with for reasons unknown. Laughing, planning, all in human form still. One gets up, and I _freeze_.

“Hey, you hear something?”

There's a sudden thunk as a knife skims past my furred flank, slamming into wood. “Nope. Anything out there would of reacted.”

“Damn it,” the career swore, stomping back to the fire. I wait, crouched and frozen, for as long as I dare before scurrying off into the underbrush to demorph and wait for sunrise.

When I creep back in the grey light of false dawn, the knife thrower is one of the three lying butchered around the campsite. Taylor is long gone.

I shudder, bite my lip, and head past the gore to my prize: Taylor's playthings. The eagle is long dead, but she apparently got bored of the hawk. A long knife thrust through its wing pins it to the exposed root of one of the trees.

The bird isn't dead, when I settle beside it. Nearly, so very nearly, but there's something left. Enough for it to go stiller beneath my fingers from the acquiring trance, a stillness that deepens into death.

I grab the nearest backpack, and disappear into the woods.

**XI.**

I've never known what it was like to be unafraid. It's not possible in the districts. But the hawk had no room for fear. No room for shame or guilt either. There was only survival, and the death that would follow if it didn't.

And no one looks up. Not even the careers. The cannons boom in the days after I acquire the hawk. Not every one is my doing. But some are, and the hawk doesn't feel the guilt the human does. Maybe that makes me careless.

I don't check thoroughly before I land and demorph.

My mistake.

«Hello, Tobias,» Taylor coos.

She likes to play with her food. It meant she didn't kill me immediately. It meant that I – eventually – escaped. Or maybe she let me. There were a few others left alive, and she wanted it to be us at the end.

Morphing means there's no sign of what she did to me. It's the only mercy I'll get.

**XII.**

«Your two hours are almost up.» Taylor circles below me in eagle morph. «You’ve spent more time hawk than human in this arena, haven’t you? Maybe after the Games, I’ll keep you as my pet. Then we can _really_ play.»

I banish memories of knives against bone. The wind is finally right. I open my beak and let the bomb fall. Taylor's right. I had mostly been a hawk. Which is why I don't have to look to know I’d hit.

The helicopters are coming. I don't care. They can't trap me forever.

**XIII.**

The wind carries me into the sky, and I'm free.


End file.
